This invention relates to an improved method and means for providing well-opened assemblages of combed fibers for preparing what is known in the art as "intimate blends" of fibers of diverse types used to form superior yarns of high uniformity of composition of those fibers. Such assemblages of well-opened combed fibers usually are collected, baled, and processed through plucking, picking, blending through cleaners, chute feeds, and carding to provide the aforesaid blends, usually far superior in uniformity of composition than can otherwise be attained through several stages of drawing blending operations.
While it had been written, " . . . neither shall a garment of linen and woollen come upon thee . . . " (Leviticus 19:19d) and "Thou shall not wear a garment of diverse sorts, as of woollen and linen together." (Deuteronomy 22:11), these admonitions for various reasons are believed to be no longer applicable, leading to a technology of combining fibers of diverse sorts, whether as initially as alternate yarns of different fiber types, or as more recently by combining fibers of diverse types in the very same elongate yarn strand, and even more recently to do that in what has become known as intimate blending, as is described above.
The end desired result of intimate blending is to provide a spinnable mixture of fibers of diverse sorts, such as cotton and polyester for example, of such uniformity in composition and processing characteristics as to be as though one were indeed processing but a single uniform fiber type staple fibers of very high quality.
Impetus for innovation regarding intimate blending has been provided by the commercial yarn mills themselves. On their own they determined the desirability of rebaling combed sliver and introducing the combed fibers once again at the bale plucker line for mixing a fiber stock of diverse fiber types for processing to form single yarn blended strands. They determined that this means was vastly superior for their needs than the blending of diverse fiber strands at the draw box, for example, or by blending of clumps of diverse fiber types using chute feed methods. Yet despite these and other advances urged, developed and used by the mills, certain disadvantages persisted in such intimate blends.
One of these disadvantages showed up in the yarns produced. They formed within each single strand of diverse fibers admixtures a yarn which showed perceptable nonuniformities in mixture percentages from length to length therealong and or in nonuniformities in comparisons of cross-sectional qualities from one cross-section to another. There still persisted significant variations in any sample from the theoretical blend composition and thus in yarn properties from length to length therealong and from one yarn to the next formed from the same fiber mix.
Another disadvantage which became apparent was in the less than complete randomness of distribution of the constituent types of fibers in the yarn product. This would reflect itself sometimes in a showing of the above described nonuniformities, but also would be evident where more delicate properties of the yarn became important, such as in critical uniformity and trueness of coloration of the yarn strands when dyed or tinted.
A further disadvantage was evident regarding the economics of the use of a combing machine of high capital expense to provide a rebaled stock albeit of high quality and unit value.
Thus, it was to the assuage of these problems that the present invention was devised, to mitigate the disadvantages then in the art in a substantially simpler and less expensive manner than was hitherto known.